Loads
by IngridSarah
Summary: Why is Selphie so disturbingly happy all of the time? It has something to do with her past.
1. Green

Author's note: This is a little experiment I'm trying, delving into Selphie's past at Trabia garden. There's   
been a sentiment on the board lately of...not exploring things in the game that should/could be explored.   
So if you want to read a completely romance-less fic, exploring something in the game that (as far as I   
know) hasn't been much dealt with, here it is. I'm curious to see if anyone is actually interested in reading   
the stuff, so I will continue this if people really do like it. (Please let me know!) It should be pretty obvious   
from what's here that I'm contemplating a much longer fic.  
  
```  
"Loads," by IngridSarah  
```  
  
One red, two green and halfayellow.   
  
Colored like traffic lights, they make a funny plastic sound as they clink together in my hands. I consider   
for a moment, trying to remember if the proportions are right. And then I remember that there's a paper   
in the drawer below the sink telling me what I need to do.  
  
In the darkness in the mirror out of the corner of my eye, my reflection looks like something I should be   
afraid of. But I take out the note and read it anyway.  
  
One green, two reds and a yellow, thrice daily.   
  
Taking the pills is like getting on a train; putting your urge to drive away and putting your trust in the   
tracks and the gears and all the people who made them and run them everyday, unaware of all of this. It is   
like being lifted from warm Centra coasts, and suddenly being placed down in a snowy circle by the arms   
of winter.  
  
I take the green first, suddenly wanting to move; wanting to go somewhere far away.  
  
~~~  
  
They ask me if I'm afraid of trains because I'm crying. I shake my head. It is not the train that told me   
that this one-way trip was necessary. The train knows that I didn't want to come in the first place, and one   
day it will be the train that takes me back.  
  
The thought is the only thing that comforts me as they bring me into a tiny room with bunk beds that   
appear to be holding up the walls. It is like the orphanage but without all the sounds and the fresh smells   
of the ocean. Instead it smells like electric heating, a vague dryness like something somewhere is burning.  
  
My bags and things are moved to a section of the closet, and a man named Doug takes me to another door   
that's far away. When he opens it two heads turn towards us and stare from inside the office, both   
surprised. One of them is human, but I've never seen anything like the other. It's narrow and discolored   
and there's a giant robe attached to it, and I can't see the thing's hands. They seem to be in the middle of   
an exchange of papers but I wonder how they can be when one of them is without hands. The human face   
looks angry behind his desk.  
  
"Hyne, Doug! Don't you ever knock?"  
  
"I'm sorry, sir." Doug closes the door and we wait.  
  
"Damned Shumis," Doug mutters. I want to ask him what he's talking about, and what is Hyne and what   
is damned and what is Shumis, but I don't ask him any of it.   
  
"Better not mention any of this to anyone," he advises me. It is needless. I am already forgetting the   
words.   
  
Memories of my youth are like that: single days floating in space, without time or context. Most of them   
are missing or broken, and there is a guilty secret behind that, when I touched what wasn't supposed to be   
touched and my memory shattered. When my teacher makes a point of telling us that *we don't use GFs   
at Trabia Garden* she stokes the coals of the fire that heats my embarrassment.  
  
And I am certain that I have been found out.  
  
Even if I could tell them what happened, what would I say? That it seemed like a good idea at the time?   
That my mind seemed empty and I might have stuffed it with newspapers if it meant the feeling of being,   
for once, complete? I cannot remember its name, this GF, but I remember at first how good it felt, before it   
began destroying my brain, leaving me emptier than I ever had been, devouring my experience, my   
memories, and my happiness.  
  
```  
  
The wind was always cool at the orphanage, but never too cool, as I remember. Nobody ever complained   
about the weather. It was almost as if the ancient continent was safe because it was the place where we   
had all come from, a place where the sand and water met, and the spirits of those first people were still   
guarding us from whatever might fall from the sky.  
  
I had not expected the large black spot on the horizon. It hadn't really been black, or at least I don't think   
it had been, but I cannot remember the thing's shape or color any better than I can remember its name,   
and so it remains black to me, a twisted shadow that I cannot discern.  
  
But I remember it was beautiful, and that it seemed to understand me in a way that no one ever had.  
  
I wanted it intensely, instantly, and miraculously I was not afraid and it did not want to fight. It appeared   
to consider me; to smile if it could indeed smile without a face, and then, finally, approve me   
unconditionally. I felt its approval like I felt the sun, hot on my back, inclusive.   
  
To call it a junction would be misleading. It was a melding; an absorption. I soaked it up so desperately   
that it felt like choking, and then it was over, and then there was and is nothing.  
  
Moments clicked by and I was back to the world, no better off than before.  
  
"Selphie!" someone called, "Where'd you run off to?"  
  
"I'm right here," I answered. I was standing on the shore, one foot firmly planted in the sand while water   
surrounded the other. I was in the place where it had all begun.  
  
```  
  
It seems that the longer one stays at Trabia Garden, the more one becomes like the dull inside of the place.   
Like chameleons, our faces are slowly turning grey to match the walls, and pale like the snow. We are   
becoming sucked in, drawn like grim, decaying old buildings.  
  
Doug has disappeared into a million other washed-out faces and I am again alone.  
  
There is a reason for the appearances of both the buildings and the students. Money, they tell us gravely,   
is in short supply. That is why we must scrimp on food, always thinking about what we are eating as if   
thinking about it will make it more filling in our stomachs.   
  
At night, thinking about it makes me feel sick, when all I can smell is heat and electric and technology.  
  
All this is provided by the Shumis, those disingenuous xenophobes that my roommates like to joke about   
when nobody is listening. There is a saying going around the place about why the Shumis never show   
their hands. "Bloody," someone explains. It's a punchline that isn't funny. The first one I have heard like   
that. Not the last.  
  
"We are only a small garden," they say, "but we need to compete." Technology is the way we compete,   
and the Shumis help us with that. We give them papers in return, our signatures, and soon we give them   
ourselves, adept student laborers who will work for nothing, helping them to maintain their artificial   
paradise in the middle of the north pole.  
  
```  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Red

AN: Thanks for the feedback guys! I really appreciate it. It should be obvious where I'm going with this   
now: I'll have one more part entitled 'yellow'. Please continue to let me know what you think! =)  
  
  
```  
Part Two: Red  
  
```  
  
Red is for stopping. I know this because I read about it in a book.   
  
But I disagree.  
  
Red is not stillness- red is circulating blood; the throbbing heart. A warning in the darkness that motion is   
soon to follow.   
  
Red is surgery on a cold table, people telling me that if I simply lie still, then I will make things better for   
all of us.   
  
I think they only want to make me stop.  
  
  
```  
  
"Great Hyne, where are you, Selphie?"  
  
The words sit on my brain, but they don't sink in. My weapon dances like a python, wraps around the   
goat's sharp horn and I yank hard. The breaking sound is metallic, as if the frozen creature in front of me   
is no living being, but a kind of strange machine instead.  
  
When it slams into me, blood splatters across my face and all over the snow as if to tell me differently.  
  
Usually I'm tired when I'm sitting at the controls here; when I'm eating off a tray in the cafeteria, when   
I'm waking up in the morning, but never when I'm fighting. Long and discolored heads don't exist here,   
nodding or shaking their heads in approval, and neither do instructors in stale wool uniforms scratching   
at the blackboard.   
  
There's just the blood, dripping over my eyes, surrounding everything, and I'm victorious.  
  
"Selphie!"  
  
Ten shocked faces are openly repulsed. My instructor arrives and makes it eleven. The boy who is   
supposed to be my partner gives me a contemptuous glare. He's making a sign so that everyone knows I'm   
crazy. Laughter dashes from one head to another.  
  
"Why don't you get back to the doctor and he can take a look at that."  
  
I'm going to tell her that she's wrong until I look down and see that she isn't. My blood is red and   
unstoppable.  
  
```   
  
Sometimes I ask people if they don't remember a better place.   
  
They don't.  
  
It's not that they don't remember things, like me. It's that there was nothing better about the places they   
came from, and they speak only in whispers about mothers and fathers and bruises. It's a losing battle to   
speak—I can't talk about memories for too long, because I know they are going to find out about the thing   
inside my mind.   
  
One day, though, I can't take it.  
  
I'm sitting in our broken, ugly auditorium and there is a pale head at the podium, thanking us for all of   
the work that we have done, and no one is moving, and no one is saying anything. I am standing up for all   
of them and screaming something out about slave labor, and the heads are all looking at me as though I   
have just broken something that is irreplaceable.  
  
Someone is calling me young lady and telling me to come with him and I recognize him as the same head   
that I saw behind the door shuffling papers and talking with the Shumi behind the desk in the office on   
the day that it all began.  
  
```  
  
"Malignant GF," someone says. An accidental discovery leaves me with nowhere to hide. It is creeping   
into all the cracks in my brain, to explain it to a layman. It is ruining my memories and the control that I   
should have and don't, to explain it to a layman.  
  
That's what they're saying.   
  
That, and that they need to operate soon, but nobody has experience with anything like this, but if they   
don't get this now then in a few months I'll be little better than dead. I'll be a zombie. I already feel like a   
zombie, but they don't listen to what I'm saying.   
  
They're not listening to me because I'm crazy. The violence is part of the craziness. It explains all the   
times that I wouldn't work with a partner and got covered in blood, and got sent to the headmaster's   
office. The screaming out is part of the violence.  
  
The operation has to be soon, of course. And I will miss the next assembly but that's ok because I   
shouldn't be around large crowds anyway. It's possible that I could be dangerous.   
  
The surgery will take place the next morning, and it's important that I eat the food that they are giving   
me. It's good for me and it's so good I wonder why I've never seen it before in the cafeteria when we're   
all so hungry.   
  
It's important to rest too, not to exert myself going fighting this afternoon when I practice. I should lay   
down and relax.   
  
It's even ok if I can't sleep, just as long as I try not to move.  
  
~  
  



	3. Yellow

Author's note: Well, it didn't quite end the way I wanted it to, but frankly, I'm all tapped out, and this is   
the best I can manage. I'm dying for feedback here! I had nothing for part 2. =( Please be a dear and   
review. PLEASE? (If it helps, although it probably doesn't, your feedback may prompt me to get that   
other stupid fic of mine working again.)   
  
```  
"Yellow"   
```  
  
  
Yellow is yielding. Yellow is the vacant feeling that I sometimes get called happiness.   
  
I like to imagine what it's like after the pill goes down my throat, if it breaks open and yellow coats my   
insides to match my dress. I feel coated when I go outside; watertight and protected against them seeing   
what is really underneath the yellow.   
  
I bounce like rubber; my smile is paste on the surface.  
  
When I sing and watch the heavy landscape as we move, there is a strange chill that passes through me.  
  
"Train, Train, Take us away...."  
  
The future is a sealed unwavering path under the ocean.  
  
~  
  
"I'm going to Balamb," I announce, "or they're sending me there, anyway." Lizzie smiles, undisturbed by   
the news. Perhaps there is something inside of her too, that she's too afraid to tell anyone about. We don't   
talk about these things, because there is always too much going on with the garden committee and school   
and our other activities to talk about them.  
  
And I have so many friends now like her, all younger, all who look up at me with a certain kind of awe   
that sometimes seems like fear.   
  
Their faces are round and unbroken. They don't starve, and they've never smelled the way this place used   
to smell, with its overpowering heat. They're like lovely flowers under the older gnarled trees that are   
their predecessors.   
  
Something happened; something that I can't quite remember, but there are no Shumis anymore. There's a   
new training center under construction and everything has been freshly painted over with a blinding white   
paint.  
  
Slowly I began to forget what things used to be like.  
  
~  
  
I'm better now, they say. I'm fixed. But they don't know about the dripping, leaking feeling that happens   
whenever I turn my head. Maybe the pills will make it better. They packaged them up for me in a little   
plastic bag that I hold as the train begins to move.  
  
My memory will never be the same. But it has never been much of a memory anyway.   
  
Sometimes I don't know how I can maintain a personality with everything seeping into oblivion the way it   
does. How can I ever find people to care about when I might not even remember them tomorrow?  
  
Even now, my old friends are slipping away from me, their faces melting together like Trabian   
snowflakes.   
  
And even as I move away, I am completely still, yielding, swallowing my pills. And then I realize that I   
am not in a train at all, but in my bathroom, staring at the mirror in the dark.   
  
In a few hours I will be able to recognize my own face.  
  
~  
END  
  



End file.
